Work Text:
(4605)
Mellie Becker’s face hits the keyboard. She groans and looks up at the projected screen of her magi-orb. There, typed in the search bar, is “is it normal for a 9 year old to have an imaginary friend or have i just fucked up as a parent” followed by a long string of g’s and t’s.
The nine-year-old in question is Mellie’s ward/niece/adopted daughter, Phoebe, and the imaginary friend is someone apparently named Dipper. All she knows about Dipper is that he had a funny hat and liked to talk about, in Phoebe’s words, “really old stuff”. Not exactly helpful.
“Not exactly helpful” was a phrase that could also be applied to her internet searching. All she had found so far were a few articles about kids whose “imaginary friends” had been revealed as gnomes, or pixies, or in one memorable case, a demon. Highly unlikely, but…
Maybe she should add some extra wards around the apartment, just in case.
-
(4607)
Mellie’s cleaning. Well, to be fair, she set the little cleaning robot down around an hour ago, and now she’s looking around for spots it might have missed. Last time, there was a pile of trash so large that the robot registered it as a person and moved around it. Can’t be too careful with these things.
She opens the door to Phoebe’s room. Sitting on the bed is a large black… thing.
The thing on the bed moves, and fuck, it’s a person – but not quite. People didn’t have pitch-black wings or sharpened claws or black and gold eyes.
It takes her a second to recognize him. Then she screams.
Mellie digs out her magi-orb, finger halfway to the emergency SOS button…
She blinks. There is nothing on the bed but a few dirty clothes. There never was.
-
(4609)
|private chat- phoebe & Mel|
phoebe: hey mel is it ok if i bring a friend over today
Mel: Who is it?
phoebe: you haven’t met him yet
phoebe: his name’s tyrone
Mel: Yeah, you can bring him over.
Mel: Introduce him to me, will you?
-
Mellie scoops up Phoebe in a hug and spins her around a bit. In a few years, she’s going to be too heavy to do that sort of thing, so she’s doing it now. Sue her.
Phoebe yelps a bit in surprise. “Put me down, Mel, put me down!” She laughs and complies.
Phoebe glances down for a second, and Mel brings her attention to the nervous boy next to her, holding her hand tightly.
“Hi, Ms. Becker.”
“Hey, kid. You’re Tyrone, right?”
Phoebe, cheery as ever, steps in to assist. “Yeah, this is Dip– uh, Tyrone! We met in… uh…”
“We met in Science class. We got put together for a group project.” Tyrone shoots Phoebe a look. “Don’t tell me you already forgot.”
“Why would I forget? It was only two weeks ago!”
They engage in some chill small talk for a few minutes. Mellie learns that both of them are currently learning about Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams, that Tyrone has a sister who likes stars and sparkly things, and that he made a documentary series one summer that he would never let see the light of day. Phoebe regales her with a story about the one time they went to the park together and the water from the water fountain went straight up Tyrone’s nose.
“Hey, uh, Tyrone, you wanna come play in my room?”
He smiles. “It’s okay, Bee, I’ll come. Can I talk to Ms. Becker for a bit?”
Phoebe hugs him and runs off to her room, leaving Mel alone with him.
Tyrone taps his foot nervously on the carpet. “Um, ma’am, I just really wanted to thank you…”
“What for?”
“Just, thank you for taking care of Phoebe, okay? She loves you so much. I couldn’t imagine a better person to be her mom.”
Mellie swallows down the automatic I’m not her mom, confused. “Uh, you’re welcome? Kid, I don’t know what this is all about, but…”
Tyrone must have run out to join her daughter because when she looks up, he isn’t there.
-
(4610)
When Mellie wakes up in the morning, she stumbles over to the bathroom, bleary-eyed. She feels like shit, and from what she can see of her reflection in the mirror, her hair is an absolute mess.
Come to think of it, there’s something wrong with her reflection. Or maybe it’s the mirror? The mirror doesn’t seem to be performing its mirrorly tasks very well, and Mellie has to blink a few more times before she notices it.
There, carved on her bathroom mirror, is HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT CO-PARENTING? , signed with– oh gods, it’s signed with a winged star. The symbol of Alcor.
Oh gods, oh fuck, she’s going to die.
-
When Phoebe enters the room, Mellie is frantically typing on her magi-orb.
“Hey, Mel!” Her chipper mood subsides when she sees the worry in Mellie’s face. “You okay?”
“Yeah, just calling 911.” She’s nearly about to hit the Call button, but Phoebe speaks again.
“Why?”
“Because there’s an Alcorian symbol carved into my bathroom mirror! Along with asking how I felt about co-parenting, but I have no idea what that’s about…”
Mellie doesn’t know how she expects Phoebe to respond. Maybe terrified panicking, or anger, or flat indifference hiding terrified panicking. She certainly doesn’t expect her to nearly collapse with laughter.
“What?”
Phoebe holds up a finger as she recovers from her laughing fit. “It’s just really funny– you know, in a terrifying way, obviously, but still. Funny.”
Mellie isn’t convinced. Her daughter seems weirdly indifferent to the whole thing, and… oh, gods, if Phoebe’s involved with Alcor she’s in so much danger. She has to keep her kid safe.
She takes a deep breath and tries to calm her urge to run around the room and scream. “Phoebe, are you hiding anything from me?”
Phoebe laughs nervously. “What? Hiding? Of course not! Totally not any secrets here, no sirree…” She glances to her left as if wondering whether she could escape this conversation by jumping out the window.
“ Phoebe… ”
“Um, Mel, are you, uh, sure this is necessary?”
“Necessary? Necessary? ” Okay, maybe she’s overreacting a little, but Phoebe doesn’t seem to be grasping that anything Alcor is bad news . It should be basic common sense, especially with a demon that regularly decimates cults and kills people.
Phoebe’s reply is measured and deliberate, as if she’s talking to a small child or trying to get someone’s attention. “Look, Mel, I’m just saying that maybe Alcor isn’t here to eat us just because his symbol’s carved on the bathroom mirror.”
“Kid, I should really–”
“And anyway, it’ll probably be gone by now . Whoever did it will have gotten rid of it. If there’s nothing there, then there’s no reason to call the cops .”
“Phoebe, why would it be gone–”
“Check, then. If nothing’s there, it’s probably some stupid prank pulled by some random delinquent. If it’s still there, you should probably dial 911.”
-
All the way to the bathroom, Mellie’s wondering what she’s done. She figured she might as well humor Phoebe, but the more she walks, the more she feels like she’s made a terrible mistake. What if she’s wrong, and Alcor’s going to disembowel them and turn their intestines into silly straws or whatever he does with people he doesn’t like, or maybe Phoebe accidentally sold him her soul and now he’s coming to collect, really, this was a mistake, she’s just wasting her time, why would it be –
It’s gone.
The bathroom mirror is as clean and smooth as the day she bought the apartment. She runs her fingers along the cold glass, and there’s not a single scratch, not a single cut or bump, nothing to indicate that the gashes she saw were ever there.
It’s suspicious. The Dreambender’s whole thing is reality manipulation, he could have just vanished the evidence when he saw she was onto him– but, fuck, how is she supposed to explain this to the police? Her case is a waste of time, clearly a lie. There’s nothing there.
She looks at it again, just to make sure her mind isn’t playing tricks on her. Nothing there.
She really needs to add some extra wards around the apartment. If they’re dealing with the Dreambender, Mellie’s going to do everything she can to keep her kid safe.
-
(“Dip, what were you thinking? Writing it on the bathroom mirror? You nearly got the cops called– what would happen if they found my suit or something?”
“Well, at least I didn’t do it in blood this time! And that’s why I said you should let me put it in the mindscape!”
“I don’t want it to become sentient! Then I’d probably have to fight against my own costume and that would be weird. Seriously, thanks for coming when I called, though.”
“No trouble. It was really to save my ass more than anything.”
“Hm, it was . Funny how that works out, huh?”)